Google and Yahoo

Casinomeister

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I'm just wondering how most webmasters feel about google and yahoo banning online casino ads. Personaly, I think it is short sited and a narrow-minded way of doing business.

I used to purchase pay-per-clicks ads for the scavenger hunt and Who Wants to be a Casinomeister contest, never spending over $50 a month. I haven't renewed any of these for a few months since these contests have been off-line, but I checked my account the other day and I noticed that Overture had no online casino ads listed. Odd, I must have missed that unless they discontinued this before the month's end.
 
If you ask me, from a UK perspective, its downright stupid .

But Google's allegedly in their 'floatation' year, so it doesn't surprise me. It wouldn't come as a shock if they re-evaluate sometime after the float.
As for Overture - apparantly, they're banning online casino ads too - but so far, only for the US.
I'm sure there's a few PPC sales execs out there cheering...or crying in their beer...depending on the ole corporate policy
 
I anticipate worse to come.

Hopefully some of the smaller PPCs will clean up their act and become useable. They stand to gain a huge amount of $$$ if they do.

The best thing to do now is SEO - and those of us who have some oldfashioned branding in place will continue on with business as usual.
 
drkasper said:
well, its d-day+2 for Google and they still have yet to pull gambling ads...

I thought the deadline was the end of this month? (today)

In the long run, this may be a good thing. This will cause most webmasters to concentrate on content and SEO, not just buying up links, any bloke can do that. Too much crap out there.

But it will definitely be a wake up call for the rouge operators. In the past when some casinos have been rogued here, the operators pooh-poohed it telling me "I don't give a shit about being in your rogue section. It is meaningless since our traffic comes from our search engine listings." Bummer for them now since they can't buy their way to the top anymore :(
 
I thought the deadline was the end of this month? (today)

Seems like it probably is today - but my email said the 27th - they're still running ads at the moment - but it'll be interesting if google could pull them all at once.

In the long run, this may be a good thing. This will cause most webmasters to concentrate on content and SEO, not just buying up links, any bloke can do that

I agree to a certain extent. It will be about content and SEO - but what about the new guys out there? There's no quick way to get into search engines anymore - even with great content and well executed SEO. Its even harder to move up the rankings with any great speed. Which means that a useful site can sit there for 6 months or more without achieving anything - with google ads, at least there was a chance of the site being seen.

But yes, as a way of filtering out rogue operators - its a great thing. However, they'll always find another way to scam the public...
 
I think that this will also open the doors for other creative means of getting well positioned. Pay per click is relatively a new concept; it's only about three years (?) old. Before then, webmasters focused on meeting the needs of how search engines spidered a site.

I agree, the new guys getting into the market will be challenged, but if they truly have something unique, they should be able to get out there.

Maybe focusing on Europe is the answer...
 
While poking around google I didn't see anything encouraging. Very spammy sites with little content are google's favorites at the time.

This could go either way - it may end up with people spamming the search engines like crazy.
 
When I started (back when Altavista was king) there was no quick way. Just hand submitting to as many se's as you were able to find.

I did try ppc for several months but found the returns lousy/ripoff.

I did get lazy in later times just optimising sites for google but always in the back of my mind was the old not all the eggs in one basket.

Luckily the older sites have made the ups and downs of google of minimal concern.

Time to get back to my old (and tedious) tricks I guess and dust off the cobwebs.
 
When I started (back when Altavista was king) there was no quick way. Just hand submitting to as many se's as you were able to find.

Exactly. Before PPC - even before Google became mainstream, just simply getting into Search Engines was easy and more importantly - free. It was slightly time-consuming in that it was a manual process - but working hard on meta-tagging and content usually meant a good listing. There were no advertiser listings - just natural search. If you wanted a directory, there was Yahoo and a few others.
As webmasters became more aware of search engine techniques, new spamming methods appeared such as cloaking and gateways...Then PPC took over and search engine algorithms became more aware of the spammers. The development will continue no doubt..

The problem now is there's a fine line for google et al to refine their algorithms even more - this would lead to ridding their listings of spammers - but at the same time, due to the very nature of global algorithms, will also be to the detriment of honest sites that are penalised for reasons beyond their control - it'll be almost impossible to be the 'all good' search engine. The problem was actually more overt in the Travel/Hotel industry and if I remember correctly, Google were under a lot of pressure to refine their search when it became unmanageable.

The issue is therefore 'where next'. In the short term, PPC will reign. But I personally think users will tire of being bombarded with what essentially is 'advertising' - and just like banner C/T rates have decreased to minimums, so will PPC c/ts. Remember - pop-ups were the next big thing after banners and how many users have now 'pop-up blockers' installed...

The next few months will be interesting..
 
I just took a peek at Google, doing a search on "online casino" Now I beleive that these are more or less the same results as last week, and probably won't change until google does its next "dance", but I did notice that the sponsored links on the right hand side are gone *poof*.

Then I do a search on "Casinomeister". The results are pretty much the norm, but there are still sponsored links on the right. But more than half of these are missing. I tried doing a search on a few more portals names, and these sponsored links are there as well. So Google is still profiting from online casino traffic, but in a indirect way.
 
drkasper said:
The problem was actually more overt in the Travel/Hotel industry and if I remember correctly, Google were under a lot of pressure to refine their search when it became unmanageable.
The search engines go nuts when you do a hotel search, that's for sure. VERY competitive industry, but a huge industy.
 
casinomeister said:
I just took a peek at Google, doing a search on "online casino" Now I beleive that these are more or less the same results as last week, and probably won't change until google does its next "dance", but I did notice that the sponsored links on the right hand side are gone *poof*.

Then I do a search on "Casinomeister". The results are pretty much the norm, but there are still sponsored links on the right. But more than half of these are missing. I tried doing a search on a few more portals names, and these sponsored links are there as well. So Google is still profiting from online casino traffic, but in a indirect way.

I searched for Casinomeister and got 2 text ads for Golden Palace on the right. :)

I also keep getting ads for Casino-on-Net on Yahoo. It is interesting that they barred me from promotions, but they are happy to give Yahoo money to try to entice me to play there. If it is a pey per click ad, I could cost them quite a lot of money. It would be much better if they just gave it to me instead. :)
 
Out of interest, does this ban extend to sites related to casinos then? I recently opened a Google AdWords account for my UK casino review site but have yet to initiate it. Have i wasted my time?

Cheers

Simmo
 
yup youre absolutely right. I had an email response when i asked them where they drew the line. Very polite and almost apologetic (UK Google) but they said basically if you link to a casino, you cant join up.
 
You should ask them why they are still letting some people get away with it then. Do a google search on websites like this one, Winneronline, gonegambling, etc. and you'll see they still have sponsored links such as www.casino-scam-warning.com and Faircasinos.com. Perhaps they don't consider these casino sites per se. Maybe you can do what these guys are doing.
 
yup .. after a couple of weeks of constantly resubmitting my ads to google (minor variations to get the running again until they and the keywords were disabled again) AdWords finally just disabled my whole account .. i can still login and activate ads but i get ZERO impressions on all of them..

i still see some PartyPoker ads when I search for "texas holdem" though ....

by the way, have any of you used "findwhat.com" ?
 
Findwhat didn't yield me any tangible results.
Goclick is acceptable.
I've heard that Espotting is great, but very expensive.

Myself, I'm going almost entirely with SERP, and doing pretty nicely. The traffic from searches seems to be of greater quality than from paid ads. Higher conversion rates.

I did see the PartyPoker Ads on a good search for Texas Holdem, Texas Holdem strategies, etc., and I have noticed a few portals and casino sites are slipping between the cracks on Google's Adwords.

I think a win for Casino City in their lawsuit against the Department of Justice will get the online casino industry back in the mainstream -- on Google and Yahoo ads again. I am very suprised that these giants (Google and Yahoo!)didn't take on the DOJ themselves! They must have lost a fortune in revenue by taking out gambling ads.
 
And when all has been said and done.....

:eek:


SE results does yield higher quality results. I have to admid that the whole google and yahoo thing does not phaze me too much. When the whole SEO thing became waaaay overrated (or so the reports said) I took my time to fine-tune it to a brilliant little art! I call it SE COLLAGE!! And it is working pretty well for me. It is about quality anyway.

I think the smaller blokes, or the newbies could not afford the advertising in those SE's anyway, so they had to find the alternative ways, which of course worked very very well! :)) Unfortuanately, all the BIG SPENDERS are now going to turn to them too... and S.O.S!! In come the drowning whales of the smaller bloke again! eish!

Well, I have my SE Collage, and the tactics are clean, tight and working, FOR SURE!

Petunia
 
doesnt really matter

do they carry large portion of casino marketing market ???

I dont think so


Gamesecure
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